l*****o
发帖数: 19235 | 1 Why not? Laureate Education paid Bill Clinton over $16 million between 2010-
2014 to be an “honorary chancellor,” Jonathan Turley reminds us, even
while the alleged diploma mill got repeatedly sued for fraud. Laureate
Education even has a twist that Trump University does not — $55 million in
State Department grants to another group run by Laureate’s founder during
Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, and while Bill got millions
to be its front man.
So why isn’t the media pursuing both stories, Turley wonders?
Laureate Education has been sued over such programs as its Walden
University Online offering, which many have alleged is a scam designed to
bilk students of tens of thousands of dollars for degrees. Students says
that they were repeatedly delayed and given added costs as they tried to
secure degrees, leaving them deeply in debt.
The respected Inside Higher Education reported that Laureate Education
paid Bill Clinton an obscene $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014 to serve as
an honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities. While Bill
Clinton worked as the group’s pitchman, the State Department funneled $55
million to Laureate when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. That would
seem a pretty major story but virtually no mainstream media outlet has
reported it while running hundreds of stories on the Trump University
scandal.
There was even a class action — like the Trump University scandal.
Travis et al v. Walden University LLC, was filed in U.S. District Court in
the District of Maryland but dismissed in 2015. It is not clear why it was
dismissed. However, the size of the contract to Clinton, the payment from
State and the widespread complaints over alleged fraud should warrant a
modicum of attention to the controversy. The controversy has many of the
familiar complaints over fraudulent online programs that take advantage of
hard working people.
Both Bloomberg and Brietbart have reported on the State Department grants to
Douglas Becker, as well as Bill’s huge personal haul from Becker’s
Laureate. Both followed up from Peter Schweizer’s 2015 book Clinton Cash,
which researched tax records to uncover the cash flow, a flow that “
exploded” during Hillary’s tenure at State:
Citing the foundation’s tax filings, Schweizer writes that while IYF
had received government grants (mainly from the U.S. Agency for
International Development) as far back as 2001, they “exploded since Bill
became chancellor of Laureate,” accounting for the vast majority of the
nonprofit’s revenue. In 2010, “government grants accounted for $23 million
of its revenue, compared to $5.4 million from other sources. It received $
21 million in 2011 and $23 million in 2012.” The link between International
Youth Foundation and Laureate has not been previously reported, he said.
The Clinton campaign disputed Schweizer’s characterization. “This is
yet another false allegation in a book that is fast being debunked,” said
Brian Fallon, a campaign spokesman. “The International Youth Foundation was
funded by the Bush administration, well before Hillary Clinton became
Secretary of State. In fact, the group’s USAID funding actually went down
in the year that she arrived at the State Department, not up.”
A Bloomberg examination of IYF’s public filings show that in 2009, the
year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants
worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010,
the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added
up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped: IYF received
21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State
Department.
Perhaps IYF got some funding during the Bush administration, but the scale
and the obvious personal linkage makes the Hillary years much more suspect.
The confluence of Bill’s ridiculous level of pay for being Laureate’s
frontman and the cash flow into IYF certainly doesn’t look like a
coincidence. It may not be a provable quid pro quo in court, but this stinks
from any other perspective. This kind of arrangements makes it clear how
the Clintons managed to rake in over $57 million in personal income during
the four years that Hillary ran State.
So why hasn’t the media focused more on the Laureate Education/IYF scandal?
Occasionally it does pop up; Jazz noted it in September as part of Hillary
’s email scandal, and Allahpundit alluded to it last night as well. In 2014
, the Washington Post noted issues with Laureate in Latin America, while
also pointing out that the Clintons were largely responsible for its large
growth there. Otherwise, it’s been quiet.
Part of the reason for that is that Republicans haven’t talked much about
it. Politico reported on Tuesday that Paul Manafort had been trying to get
Trump to stop talking about Judge Gonzalo Curiel and to start attacking both
Clintons on Laureate/IYF instead, while Corey Lewandowski wanted to
continue attacking Curiel. The campaign later denied there was any such
split, but either way it demonstrate why presidential campaigns have to have
top-drawer communications management.
Team Trump could have set the news cycle to focus on that curious and
potentially corrupt nexus of payoffs and taxpayer grants in which the
Clintons and Laureate/IYF are enmeshed. That would have forced the media to
take a harder look at the scandal and put the Clintons on the defensive.
Instead, Trump and his team kept talking about his own potential scandal and
attacked a federal judge who has nothing to do with the election. They
wound up doing all sorts of damage to themselves and never laid a glove on
the Clintons. Indeed, they practically wrote a series of attack ads for Team
Hillary instead.
Clearly, the media doesn’t want to dig into Laureate and the Clintons.
Unless they get forced into it, they never will. | l*****o
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